Hope - Lesley Pearse [120]
He felt an odd sense of disappointment in her, even though it was he who had suggested that she should go. He pulled the note off the nail.
‘Dear Doctor,’ he read.
Sadly Gussie and Betsy died this morning within minutes of one another. I didn’t know what I should do about them. I haven’t got any money for a funeral and I couldn’t stay in there with them, so I thought it better to go. I’m going out into the countryside until I’m sure I haven’t caught it too. Thank you for coming to see them, it was very kind of you, and I hope I haven’t put you at risk too. Yours truly, Hope Renton
A lump came up in his throat. It was astounding that she could write so well, not one spelling mistake, and such good handwriting. But it was the honesty and kindness in her message that affected him most. He thought most people in her position would just run without any explanation or thanks.
He opened the door, but on seeing that the room was full of flies he hastily shut it again. He’d glimpsed the blanket-covered mound on the floor and didn’t need to look beneath it to check Hope wasn’t mistaken.
Two hours later Bennett walked wearily back to Clifton. As the council offices were closed on Sundays he’d reported the deaths to the police, leaving them to contact the appropriate people. Sadly, the man he spoke to seemed dull-witted, unable to take in how serious cholera was, or how quickly it could spread. He said deaths had been reported among the Irish squatting by the river Frome, but he chuckled as if that pleased him. Bennett had been tempted to wipe that smug expression off his face by informing him cholera wasn’t choosy who it struck down, and it could very well be him or one of his family next.
But of course he didn’t say it; to point out the gravity of the situation would only start panic. One thing was certain though: this handful of deaths wouldn’t be the end of it. And Bennett knew that as a doctor he would be duty-bound to help. He didn’t want to – it would be far safer to stay up in Clifton and pray the disease didn’t get that far. At least half the stricken would die, and with or without a doctor that ratio would remain the same. But he’d made his oath to help the sick and that was what he must do.
The young girl Hope worried him too. She might be infected, and without any money, a roof over her head or anyone to turn to, she could be in a desperate situation.
He tried to think where she was likely to have gone. She’d only said ‘the countryside’, which could mean anywhere around Bristol. It would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack!
As the sun was beginning to set on Sunday evening Hope looked down at the Avon Gorge from a viewpoint in Leigh Woods with tears streaming down her face.
The beauty of the scene in front of her was incomparable: the majesty of the rocky gorge, the orange sinking sun reflected in the water, the deep green of the woods on both sides. The tide was high and a large three-masted sailing ship was being slowly hauled down towards the sea by horses on the river banks. She could hear the sailors calling to one another, and someone unseen was playing an accordion. On the ship’s deck there was a lady in a white dress and a feathered hat, holding the hands of two small boys.
Hope had come to this spot many times when she was collecting wood, and whatever the weather, she had never tired of watching the ships, or imagining where they had come from, where they were going or what cargo they were carrying.
But today she didn’t care if that lady and her small boys were sailing to America or some other far-off land. She didn’t care if the ship was marooned without wind for weeks at the river mouth, or even if it sailed into a tempest. Gussie and Betsy, her dear friends, were dead, and she couldn’t even be there to say some prayers for them when they were buried.
Betsy had once laughed at her for feeling sad that a dead neighbour had a pauper’s burial. She had said that whether you were taken to the graveyard in a gilded coach with six plumed horses,